Thanks so much for your bathroom recommendations! You all are awesome! I’ve made notes from all your ideas and will be using lots of them. I also got a light fixture off a Facebook swap group earlier today so I’m excited to start putting the house back together.
The past two days have been crazy. It feels like we have nothing to do on the house and then we have tons of stuff to do all at once.
Step one was finishing the wall.
The wall came together pretty easily except for the last panel.
There is an outlet that a previous owner had caulked and put behind the bookcase. Not really safe, so we rewired a new outlet and had to fit in the last board.
As with any project, where you are working in tight spaces, with old construction, it took FOREVER!
We spent about two hours getting the board to fit and getting the outlet installed and wired. I’m sure a professional could have done it quicker, but we aren’t professionals.
We ended up cutting the last board into two parts to in order to get it wedged behind the bookcase and around the outlet. (This isn’t the final photo- it actually fit very snug.
Finished wall! We will be painting it white to match the opposite wall in the room and the wall behind the built ins.
Yesterday we started to install trim in all the areas that are getting carpet. It is easier to install carpet after the trim is installed and it is easier to paint with the trim on the wall, so the trim needed to go in this week.
I’ve never installed a piece of trim in my life, but after two days and what seemed like a million hours, I’m pretty confident I could install trim or crown molding on my own.
Much to my excitement my dad let me use the saw (I felt like I was able to borrow the “good” car) and I figured out how to make the right cuts.
The hardest part about the trim was measuring. I pretty much suck at converting fractions, and would often say things like, “this wall is 104 inches plus 2 ticks,” because figuring out that 2 ticks was actually 2/16 which is actually 1/8 is really too much for my renovation brain right now. It’s probably all the drywall dust we’ve been breathing for two weeks!
Installing trim is NOT my favorite thing to do, mainly because you get up, get down, get up, get down, and repeat…. for hours.
I feel like I’m a hundred years old and I could barely walk to the car tonight, everything aches!
However, all the trim in the carpeted areas is done! WOOHOOO!!!!!
This is the old dining room. The dining room and kitchen both have pantry closets with louvered doors. To me it made them look like bedroom closets so we are replacing them with solid panel doors.
If you can’t tell by now, I’m kind of a plain Jane when it comes to the house.
Tomorrow the painter arrives and we have very few things that we can do while he paints. I’m glad because we’ve been putting in long days at the house this week and everyone needs a break!
This is part of our ongoing renovation project for our new home in Florida. Our goal is to be done by Thanksgiving or else. Follow the daily accounts of our real life during this DIY renovation process here.
Karen says
I love my table saw. Molding is no joke. I did molding at the top of my kitchen cabinets and b/c of the angle I must have made a bazillion wrong cuts. I have not done molding since. Glad you are getting the hang of it.
Toni Anderson says
Yeah- the angle thing is tough. I’m a visual learner so I had to keep going back and looking at the wall to make sure I was doing it right.
Maria Trunzo says
Try Advil for the aches. I use I when I paint & use a step ladder instead of an organized step class. You realize how old u really are.